Around Britain
Jonathan Scott returns to the county of Northampton and the Soke of Peterborough
The best resources for Northamptonshire relations
Family historians all know that unusual entries often crop up in the pages of parish registers. If you happen to look at the register for the parish of Walgrave, which today survives at Northamptonshire’s county archive, then you will find a good example. The entry in question records the marriage of Prince Pekowisca and Madam Fatima, which was supposedly witnessed by Napoleon Bonaparte together with his adopted son Eugène de Beauharnais.
“It’s interesting to speculate on the identity of the prankster,” says collections officer Katie Stewart, “as access to the registers should have been limited to the clergyman, the churchwardens and the parish clerk. The joke was perhaps motivated by the fact that a new register had been ordered by the parish, which was started in 1811, and this left a bit of space to fill on the last page.”
The county of squires and spires is landlocked between eight other counties – sharing a boundary with Lincolnshire that is about 20 yards long. Traditionally it also includes the Soke of Peterborough, also known as the Liberty of Peterborough or Nassaburgh Hundred, which is a group of about 30 parishes associated with the City and Diocese of Peterborough. In 1965 the Soke merged with Huntingdonshire, later becoming part of Cambridgeshire.
The county archives and heritage service opened its doors again in July 2020, and like archives across the UK, is open to researchers on a strict appointment basis. Katie reports that an enormous amount of work went into ensuring that everything would be safe for staff, volunteers and researchers after the reopening. But one long-term, beneficial side effect of the social restrictions placed on Northamptonshire is improved online access to more collections.
“During closure, we continued to respond to enquiries,” she says. “Some staff were redeployed and others mainly worked on typing up paper-based catalogues so they can be uploaded onto our online catalogue. So, one positive result of the lockdown will be that more of our collections will be available to search online.”
It is already possible to access the county’s parish registers remotely. The local family history society has transcribed thousands of entries, which are now available via Findmypast ( findmypast.co.uk). For the originals you can go to Ancestry ( ancestry.co.uk), which has scanned and indexed parish registers from across Northamptonshire. The record office has also dug down into parish-chest material, including name-rich sources such as settlement papers, removal orders and bastardy bonds, which you can explore via the online catalogue located at nro.adlibhosting.com/search/simple.
Two major collections that have arrived in recent years are the archive of the Northamptonshire County Police Force (1806–2013) and the photographic collection of the Northampton Chronicle & Echo newspaper (1970s onwards). These join an already exceptional range of family and estate collections that reflect the county’s proud heritage.
“These collections include evidence of all social classes, from
‘After lockdown more of our collections will be available to search online’
learned correspondents to their servants,” says Katie. “From the northernmost part of the historic county, covered by the Fitzwilliam of Milton archive, to its most southerly tip, where the Cartwrights of Aynho were the dominant family, there are stories to be uncovered in such sources as rentals, servants’ wage books, estate accounts, bills and surveys.
“The service is home to an unusually complete collection of 18th-century militia ballot lists, which together offer an approximate census for the male population of the period.
“Earlier historical periods are also represented by lists of men serving in various military units.”
There’s also a rare collection of exemption tribunal papers from the First World War, with details of individuals who were seeking exemption from military service.
Northamptonshire is of course famous for the boot and shoe trade that dominated the local economy, starting in Northampton in the early 19th century, then spreading out to towns such as Kettering, Rushden and Wellingborough. The record office holds material relating
to more than 50 boot and shoe firms that existed during the 19th and 20th centuries. There’s also a collection of some 12,000 shoes and boots at Northampton Museum, but it’s closed for refurbishment.
Medical Records
Current projects include transferring records from St Andrew’s Hospital, which was founded by public subscription for “private and pauper lunatics” and opened as the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum in 1838. “The hospital was a pioneer of moral management: the humane treatment of the mentally ill,” Katie reveals. “Patients included poet John Clare, Violet Gibson [who attempted to assassinate Mussolini] and Gladys Spencer-Churchill. The collection includes some patient records, registers of admissions and discharges, minutes, photographs, deeds and plans.” The local archive also has an important probate collection, including wills proved by the Archdeaconry Court of Northampton and the Consistory Court of Peterborough (1469– 1857). “Between them, these ecclesiastical courts proved the wills in almost all of the parishes in Northamptonshire and Rutland, and the wills are available to search via Findmypast.” The Probate Index is at bit.ly/fmp-northants-wills.
It’s also worth visiting the page of free resources on the website of Northamptonshire Family History Society: northantsfhs.org/free_ resources. This includes a leaflet for beginners in PDF format, plus guides to local resources including births, marriages and deaths material, the Poor Law, strays, a maps and place-names index, and research into nonconformists – at the time of the 1851 religious census, an estimated 28 per cent of the local population attended a nonconformist chapel.